The research goal of this doctoral dissertation is to unpack the social mechanisms and study the systemic pressures in the orientation process of Newly Arrived Migrant Students (NAMS) in Flemish secondary education. This thesis rests on the assumption that the behaviour of individual teachers, students, or parents is strongly embedded in the structure of the educational field and the positioning of the different educational agents in it. The behaviour of teachers, students and parents that is substantiated by specific social mechanisms can be explained by looking at structural features of how education is organised. The underlying logic and cultural conventions lay at the heart of what needs to be changed to tackle persistent social inequalities of specific groups of students in education.